Bill Maher welcomed his top-of-the-show guest on Friday night’s show, and get ready for this one because it’s a long and impressive title, Dr. Anne Rimoin, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at UCLA and Director of the Fielding School’s Center for Global and Immigrant Health, declaring that he is abolishing handshakes in favor of the Japanese bow. The Real Time host asked his interviewee many questions about the coronavirus (COVID-19), including humanity’s odds at surviving the disease, if it can be transmitted to his dogs and if Bernie Sanders stands a chance at making it to election day with all of these campaign events.

The 78-year-old candidate has been campaigning hard, pushing forward with his grueling schedule albeit surviving a heart attack last year, appearing “ in rallies where he is touching people all day long,” said the comedian and lat night host, expressing concern. “What’s the over-under of him making it to the election?” he asked Rimoin.

“If you like Bernie, don’t touch him!,” said Maher.

The virus, which the HBO host attempted to compare to the Spanish Flu, is now being labeled COVID-19, he noted in his opening monologue. “You know a disease is serious when they give it a rap name.”

“Assume everyone is infectious. That’s the same warning they give everyone on ‘The Bachelor’,” he said as a way to comedically ease growing tensions, joking that in Los Angeles, “the air is so toxic that anything that comes out of anyone’s mouth dies immediately.”

As a result of the virus, stock market declines have caused investors $6 billion in wealth over the past week. “Bloomberg is not even sure anymore if he can buy the country,” Maher said.

“My message is, you’re going to hear some scary things. In Hong Kong they think a dog tested positive. … I told my two dogs, ‘Bark into your elbow and do not drink out of the same toilet.”

Rimoin explained that coronavirus usually infects only animals and that scientists suspect it was passed at an open air market in China via small armadillo-like animals called pangolins which are widely trafficked and eaten.

He concluded that the world survived SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, 2003), Swine Flu (2009) and other contagions, making the audience repeat with him: “Flus will not replace us. Flus will not replace us.”

“Whatever it is, they always end, right?” he asked Rimoin as a way to ease viewer concerns.
You can watch the full conversation above.

Michael is a music and television junkie keen on most things that are not a complete and total bore. You can follow him on Twitter — @Tweetskoor